Staff Brand & Motion Designer

Gusto, Inc. is building an in-house creative studio where brand and motion come together from concept to final delivery. In this senior individual contributor role, you will shape how Gusto looks, feels, and moves across digital and physical touchpoints, while helping define standards for motion systems and AI-assisted creative direction.

This is a hybrid position based in San Francisco, CA, designed for a maker who can balance big brand-defining work with fast, execution-focused needs.

What you’ll do

• Design and execute visual and motion work for product launches, product education, brand campaigns, events, and digital channels.
• Design and evolve brand systems, including motion guidelines, templates, and guardrails that help teams produce consistently on-brand work.
• Integrate motion into the brand design process by establishing principles and patterns for animation that extend Gusto’s visual identity into dynamic and digital formats.
• Direct and evaluate AI-generated creative work, setting standards for what is on-brand, what needs additional push, and what should not ship.
• Use AI tools to shorten the distance between concept and execution by exploring more territory, iterating faster, and raising quality across deliverables.
• Collaborate closely with other creatives and cross-functional partners across marketing, product, and growth, from early concept through final delivery.
• Build repeatable templates and workflows that support faster turnaround without sacrificing quality.
• Maintain brand integrity across a wide range of deliverables, including work where AI tools contributed to production, ensuring everything feels cohesive, human, and unmistakably Gusto.

What you bring

• A portfolio demonstrating robust design skills and creative thinking, including brand identity, product marketing, campaigns, and digital content. Include examples that explain how AI contributed to your work and the decisions you made.
• Strong design instincts across typography, color, composition, and motion direction, with a clear sense of what makes work distinctive versus generic.
• Expert proficiency in motion design principles and tools, including Figma and Adobe Creative Cloud, plus motion tools such as Calvary, Rive, and Lottie.
• A demonstrated point of view on AI in creative work, including how to direct it, when to override it, and how to maintain high creative standards when AI tools are part of the workflow.
• Comfort shifting between big, brand-defining efforts and fast-turn executional needs.
• Proficient collaboration skills across creative, production, marketing, and product partners.
• A maker mindset focused on improving how work gets made, not just producing outputs.
• Experience developing or contributing to creative standards for AI-assisted production, such as guardrails, evaluation criteria, or workflows that help a team deliver at a higher level.

Tools you’ll use

• Figma
• Adobe Creative Cloud
• Calvary
• Rive
• Lottie

Compensation and benefits

• Competitive base pay, benefits, and equity via RSUs.
• Compensation packages with a strong emphasis on equity-based compensation and ownership in Gusto.

Compensation details: Our cash compensation range for this role is $146,000/yr to $183,000/yr in Denver & most remote locations, and $177,000/yr to $222,000/yr in San Francisco, Seattle & New York. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Minimum experience: 6 years.